Lots of potential....

Lots of potential with this game, although I hope you guys have some plans for gameplay tweaks (don't think the QW armor system is going to cut it). I hope to see some servers up soon so I can start talking about more of the gameplay. I'm a little concerned about grenade/rocket splash at the moment, but I will be able to comment better once I know how the other weapons stack up; the projectile bolt weapon is an interesting alternative to the railgun

The 50 ammo limit on the grenades/rockets is a nice touch; it may be appropriate for the limit to be lower, but it's silly to see Q1/Q3 have limits above that.

Keep it up! :)

Tks for that nice comment =)
It seems you're some long time quaker, isn't it ?

Yeah, I've played the Doom/Quake series from almost the beginning (although only "seriously" for a few years). I'm quite intrigued by the possibility of a standalone FPS game with solid/great gameplay (I've been through and enjoyed CPMA, but I'm not afraid to deviate from it). I also followed Cube for some time, but the focus on that project is admittedly very different from what I am looking for.

I will periodically drop by to see how you guys are doing. :)

*ping*

*pong*

I haven't seen this thread before, nice to see you around PI :)

What version have you been trying ?
What do you think about the QW armor system ?

Sorry for the new release delay, we're working on bug fixing + many small things to add/fix. We plan to release something in around 3 weeks. Stay tuned !

I've bungled around with the version here: http://www.warsow.net/?p=download

Summary:

There is a wide range of potential armor systems, but it'd probably help to avoid reinventing the wheel. With a 2 - 3 armor system, you should keep absorbtion percentages, at a minimum, between 40% and 75% (these numbers assume a general system, without weird factors like the "energy" effect in Q2). Also, 200 (max) instant-armor on a RA pick-up should be avoided.

Explanation:

The worst armor quality (absorbtion rate) needs to be, at a minimum, 40%, not just 30%. At least on paper, 100 dmg potential improved to 143 is nothing particularly special (less than half a power shot), and only once you get that mark up to around 167 does the weakest armor not suck so much. CPMA's GA only gives 50 armor (meaning only 150 armor absorbtion), but the protection rate is 50%, so a player can stack two GAs to get 150 up to 200 (having 150 and potentially 200 is comparable to having 167 immediately).

On the other hand, it's overkill to have RA at 80% and YA at 60%. This observation makes sense when you look at how much these armors *don't* protect (RA: 20%, YA: 40%) A 100 health player that has secured RA can take 500 damage before dying without recharging any health. A 100 health player without RA dies after 250 damage, regardless of how much YA hording is done. The difference between 250 and 500 can be a game breaker, particularly when the RA is in anything close to resembling a secure area. The 500 player *should* be able to lock down the map, since s/he can go 500 dmg before needing a health recharge (God forbid the RA player controls a QW-style Mega).

As for the 200 mega-armor, it's inadvisable to let a fresh player be entirely maxed out on health and armor after getting just 1 RA and 1 MH. The best the opponent can do is 100/150, which is really no match against 200/200 as soon as 200/200 grabs any weapon. Plus, a 200 armor swing means a change in being able to absorb 2 more strong hits, which does not substantially disrupt someone overaggressively getting the armor (big deal if I have to take 140 armor damage and 35 or even 47 health damage if it lets me restore my armor to max immediately and denies you the pick-up).

Hi Pure Imaginary,

your article shows impressive gamer's knowledge ! Even if currently AFK, Blemish will carefully take a look at this stuff. Tks for this nice contribution, man. BTW don't forget you tested one of our earliest version. Physics, weapon system and bonus have changed a lot since =)

Yeah, I'll try to post again once I get a solid look at your "leaked" version. Some things seemed a little out of whack, and I want to make sure I'm understanding everything correctly.

Thanks again for responding, and thank you for the hook-up with a newer version. ;) I've got the Feb 13 build, anyway, so I'll rant on that.

I like that ammo limits are actually relevant, although I am concerned about the gameplay of "secondary ammo." I don't understand everything going on with that, so I'll wait until it gets more polished.

I only take 40 points of splash damage from my own rockets at point blank range. Considering a player can max at 200/200, 40 dmg (including just 10 against health), this penalty needs to be signficantly larger if you don't want players RJing half the entire game (maybe up it to 60+, or make it 50+ but make it so that armor only protects 50%, whether it is GA, YA, or RA, so that players can't use rocket splash damage to make armor running so easy; force the players to rely more on their trick-jumping skill).

The biggest thing I noticed is that the armors have changed a little bit, but they are still quite imbalanced:

Green: 1/3 protection (~33%), 50 per pick-up, 100 max
Yellow: 2/3 protection (~66%), 100 per pick-up, 150 max
Red: 3/4 protection (~75%), 200 per pick-up, 200 max

As mentioned earlier, with all other things held nearly equal, the GA needs to be cranked up to at least 40%, and really you need it around 50% if you are going to have players stacking 50 point GAs (instead of giving the 100 all at once). Right now, with 33%, that second GA to take a player from 50 to 100 is essentially worthless, because they'll be dead by the time they have used 50 armor points (assuming 100 health), and in the event they do get to upgrade their armor, the weak conversion rate only gives 25 armor points if upgading to yellow, and the auto-max component of the Red Armor means the bonus from having more GA is 0. Increasing GA's protection rate from 33% to 50% makes it suck less, which is more or less the idea behind GA; have it clearly be the worst, but let it be relevant.

The Red Armor is plenty powerful when it is worth 150 points; there is no real need to make it worth 200 (it should still stack to 200, but don't make it 200 automatically). The main thing that a 200 RA does is make the lucky opening-spawn who gets it nearly invincible.

I don't want to say "use Promode's armor system" (really, I don't), but unless there is a deliberate effort to change the way armor is supposed to behave (like giving it situation strengths/weaknesses or some special properties), then the ideal 3-armor system is going to be pretty close to Promode's system (considering they've spent years perfecting it). My advice would be that unless something innovative is going to be done with the armors, go ahead and ripoff Promode's system and save yourself the trouble; if nothing else, it is a great starting point, and if there is something about the system that isn't so great, you can always change it later.

I am also happy to discuss gameplay privately with Blemish or anyone else if that is desired. If this is the last of my involvement, then I wish you guys the best with the next release.

Thanks!

Thanks for all those feedbacks and everything PI, I can't read it here (I'm at work and I don't have any internet access at home for the moment) but I'll read everything asap =)

Anyway, we really focused on movements for the moment and nothing was done concerning weapons/ammos/armor... we've just quickly implemented an armor system à la cpm but nothing was tested/tweaked yet.

Concerning ammos, there's 2 kind of shots : a weak shot and a strong shot.

- Weak shots will behave like a mid tier weapon
- Whereas a strong shot will be the equivalent of a top tier weapon.

- Weak and strong ammos are separated.

- Weak ammos come with the gun, for example : when you pick a rocket launcher you have 10 weak rockets (and q3/cpma "topup" system at 10 rox).
- Strong ammos come in ammo boxes (let's say 5 strong ammos per box).

- Weapon spawn is fast (5s)
- Ammo box spawn is at 15s (not final : not tested/tweaked yet)
=> so the weapon deny is translated to ammo box deny.

- There's only 1 attack button, if you have strong ammos a strong shot will be used automatically.

- Official maps will have a restrained set of strong ammos per map, like 2 or 3 different types, making hot spots in the maps by unbalancing weapons.

This system gives us theorically a lot of flexability, a mapper could use a standard system (top tier RL/rail/shaft) or try new stuff like a top tier shotgun (think of a doom2 ssg) or pg, gl etc.

Weapon deny would be only usefull if your enemy's near (weapon respawn 5s) but there would be ammo box deny to keep the top tier weapons secured.

The tough part will be to tweak everything to :
a) prevent spam (due to fast weapon respawn)
b) balance everything:
- strong shots should be balanced between them
- strong shots should always win against weak shots
- weak shots should be balanced between them
- in addition: the spawn weapon should be inferior to all of the other weapons + its strong shot should be superior to the other weap weak shots but inferior to their strong shots
c) tdm (:Þ)

Right now, it seems like it is the "weak" shots that are being used first, not the "strong" (this is probably fixed in your current private build, though).

Thanks for the explanation, although I am still torn on this weak/strong issue.

I can reproduce the armor algorithms and details if that helps.

Green: 50%, 50 ppu and 100 max
Yellow: 66%, 100 ppu and 150 max
Red: 75%, 150 ppu and 200 max

It pretty much works like this:

armor_quality = (player's armor quality) 0 (null), 0.5 (green), 0.66 (yellow), 0.75 (red)
armor_quantity = (player's armor count)
pickup_quality = 0.5, 0.66, 0.75
pickup_quantity = 50, 100, 150
pickup_max = 100, 150, 200

if (pickup_quality * pickup_max > armor_quality * armor_quantity) {
armor_quantity = armor_quantity * armor_quality / pickup_quality + pickup_quantity;
armor_quality = pickup_quality;
if (armor_quantity > pickup_max) armor_quantity = pickup_max;
}

[If desired, you could replace "pickup_max" with "(pickup_quantity + 50)"]

"Right now, it seems like it is the "weak" shots that are being used first, not the "strong" (this is probably fixed in your current private build, though). "

Yeah the system I've described on my previous post isn't implemented yet.
In your build they work like in unreal or painkiller (which means, 1 button for a weak shot and another one for a strong shot).

As I've said before, the weapon parameters (reload, damage, etc) havent been implemented at all yet (it's very raw in your build, and especially very spammy).

Tell me what's bothering you with the weak/strong system so we could share ideas :) I NEED feedbacks about it !

In all sincerity, the weak-strong system right now is actually pretty cohesive. It isn't like UT where it puts two weapons into one (when you just as well could have two separate weapons that could be picked-up), nor do you have the hassle of alternate fire triggers. Also, yours is much different from a weak-strong ammo system I have played before (Q1 Mission Pack 2, sucky).

If there is a problem, it would be the scarcity of the strong ammo; it's not quite as valuable as armor, but one could very well control all the important ammo on the map. It's not such a problem unless there are one or two clips that really stand out. If the two best weapons on the map have one or two runnable ammo clips, then the controlling player would have a substantial advantage.

Still, there are merits. The ammo provides a mini-power play, and it can be used to boltster weaker weapons that a mapper wants to be stronger. If you have a map that is a little more open but don't like the power drop-off you get with GL/RL/snot, you can give just those weapons ammo clips but not clips for SG/sniper.

Unfortunately in this example, the improved RL only has 5 "good" ammo behind it, but the sniper weapon has 10 "weak", but the increase in the ammo may offset the advantage a mapper may desire. As pointed out, it is just a mini-power play.

I can't find too many specific problems with it, but it may be something that gets annoying after people have played the game for two years. But maybe it's improvements offset any inadequacies, I can't figure it out yet.

I'll keep thinking about it, or I can just wait for Warsow servers that I can join. :)

Yeah, there should be a release of linux binaries guys !